When Evo Morales became the first indigenous president in Latin America in 2005, I applauded his victory, but by the time he resigned on 10 November amid widespread protests, he had lost all my respect. Here was a politician of whom much was expected and he did lift many out of poverty, but absent from his democratic personality were the two central ingredients of democratic living: forbearance and restraint.
Bolivia’s constitution afforded the president a single term of 5 years but in 2008 he changed the constitution to allow a two-term limit; argued that he should be allowed to run for two terms under the new constitution, and the constitutional court allowed him to do so. Then in 2016, claiming that term limits violated his human rights to run for office, he held a referendum to abolish them. He lost, but the result was overturned by the constitutional court stacked with his appointees. Matters deteriorated to a point where Colombia stated its intention to take the term limits issue to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for it to determine whether they indeed violated human rights.
Had the army and the police not deserted him, Morales would still have been there fighting for a fourth term, and as Guyana proceeds towards regional and national elections in March 2020, his demise contains many of the themes this column has been considering in relation to free and fair elections: government control of elections management bodies, observer mission usefulness and context, the complicated nature of the elections process and accountability.
